100% funding cuts to UK arts courses...

[Quodlibet]

This horrifically depressing story today: Coalition funding cuts will remove 100% of public funding from many flagship UK arts institutions including Laban, Royal College of Music, Goldsmiths, Guildhall, SOAS, Central...a very long list.

This essentially is going to mean that not only is the future of our creative industries being drastically undermined, but that studying for a creative career is going to become even more difficult (or impossible) for those from low-income families.

Open University is going to be the biggest loser in cash terms - meaning many of those studying from home/part time/while raising children will also lose out.

Short-sighted, destructive and incredibly depressing.

Oh that's sad!

oh my god; some of these institutions are genuinely international calibre. shocking and short-sighted.

It is a fucking travesty. Without arts and culture what will our society become? So many artists, film makers and musicians have already left because of inadequate funding compared to europe, now all new generations of artists and musicians and film makers will be either wiped out or forced to move out.

And this in a country where the creative industries are more significant earners in our GNP than science.

Who was it that said 'culture is to the U.K what the weather is to Spain'? In terms of tourist income?

Let alone the contribution the arts make to our identity and potential as individuals and citizens.

It is sickening, the way they are tearing down the fabric of what makes the UK great. We are amongst the top worls leaders in arts and culture. It will take generations to recover if they go ahead with this.

Oh it is really depressing, I'm so sorry things are going the way they are

AND it's just such a depressing prospect that the arts in the future will be the preserve of the elite again - those who can afford private music/ballet lessons and tickets to the opera. So many inroads have been made into widening access so that EVERYONE can enjoy and potentially work in the arts, this is such a massive massive step backwards from that.

I agree Quodlibet.

It looks to me as if a lot of those places (eg LSE, SOAS, Royal Academy of Music) will have to look to overseas students to keep going, so people from everywhere else but the UK will benefit from some of our best institutions...

This is the what the £9,000 per student will be replacing I guess.

my goodness - I can understand cuts - but 100% is tragic.

the government are just hoping that they'll all go private and they won't have to fund them at all any more. They'll be all for completely privatising the schools system next.

The previous post is what you'd call grim humour.

They don't have a fucking musical or creative bone in their body, the government.

It's terrible. But not at all unexpected

and we'll have no British artistic talent of our own in the next generation thanks to them.

..so it is still going to fund these places via lending money to students to pay a hgher rate of fees.

LSe etc already take large numbers of overseas students.

Cutting funding to top tier places like LSE and SOAS looks like a very bad idea.

However some of the institutions on the list probably deserve the chop. University College, Falmouth and York St John University College for example can't even get into the top 75 unis in the country.

The Open University was created to enable people otherwise unable to have a university education to receive one. It is a great institution and this country is the richer for having it.
Withdrawing its funding is a terrible thing to do.
Why on earth don't they just raise taxes instead of all this savage cutting?
The UK is going to end up as a truly awful place to live.

but the fees don't cover the real costs do they? That's why they (universities) get funding surely?

Why else would foreign students pay so much more

for example currently at the RAM

BMus: £3,290 is the home/EU fees

£17,570 - International and ELQ fees

Ah that explains why teh Arts professor next door has decided to take early retirement and is moving away then. A sad loss.

DS1 has Asperger's; the only real employment chance he has is following his talent becuase it can be done alone and in silence; making jewellery. Removal of options from people is never a great way of maximising life chances. I used to work as a student mentor and one of my greatest successes was getting an incredibly talented severely dyslexic student into an arts degree via a back door route. It was for her the difference between a life and dependency 9she couldn;t even fill in an application form alone).

The best way out of finacial penury is by creating chances and ways for people to make non dependent lives and contribute in taxes, as well as asscoaited tourism.I accept that cuts have to be made-= as mum also to a more severely disabled child I would indeed fume if our services were slashed and arts remained untouched- but there is a complete inability to see the values of what exists.

Santa - I taught a boy in Zimbabwe just like that. AMAZING voice, failed his academic exams - pretty sure he was dyslexic (he knew the stuff if you asked him he couldn't write it down).

He moved to America and has done really well with his singing getting in through the "back door". There was no other choice open to him and he's done really well for himself.

I guess you have to choose what is important to you.

I would find it hard to live without education, theatre, music, libraries, culture generally - and it seems tragic if those things are only going to be available to people with money.

The govenment know that truly creative people will always try to find a way to persue their art. It's going to be tough though. Bastards.

I am actually stunned by this. Cuts were expected but 100%?